CHAPTER TWO
“RED OR BLACK?” Becky Winston, director of the Women in Transition program at Wild Hills Community College, opened her wardrobe closet and pulled out two cocktail dresses. The red one was slinky and sequined, the black layered in chiffon and hanging from spaghetti straps.
Meg sat on the foot of her bed and shook her head. “They’re beautiful, but it’s not a formal occasion. It takes place in the afternoon and outdoors in an arena at the Lost Springs Ranch for Boys.”
Becky, a half inch shorter than Meg’s five-seven, and just as slender in build, had offered Meg the pick of her wardrobe when she’d complained of having nothing to wear to the auction.
She put the dresses away and pulled out beige twill trousers and a brown silk shirt, then a denim jumper that would fall just above the knee. “This looks really cute with a T-shirt. Want to try it on? You’ll wow him with your legs.”
Meg was about to deny that she wanted to wow Amos Pike, then remembered that she did. She had to make him want to go away with her for a week or the whole Boradino plan fell apart.
She pulled her slacks and sweater off. Becky dug in the drawer of her dresser and handed Meg a crisp white T-shirt.
The shirt and jumper on, Meg studied her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe doors.
Becky combed her fingers through Meg’s curly red hair. “What kind of impression do you want to make? Sexy? Powerful? Vampish?”
Meg remembered what Boradino had said. “I don’t want to strike any poses. I just want to be me.”
Becky winced. “No, you don’t. Let’s face it, Loria. What you are right now is Chuck Norris in a skirt. What we want him to see is the woman inside the security specialist, the part of you that would have blossomed if you’d had a mom as a teenager. You have it all—the sweetness, the nurturing qualities, the tenderness. But you’re always thinking like a bodyguard.”
“I am a bodyguard.”
“But the body you’re guarding is yours. And we want this guy to find it.”
“No, we don’t. We just want him to find me appealing enough to come away with me for a week.”
Becky rolled her eyes. “And you don’t think your body will have anything to do with that?”
“I just don’t want him to think I bought him for a week of sex, you know? Or I’ll have more trouble than I’ll know what to do with.”
“He’ll want to think that’s why you bought him, whatever your reasons are. Now, come on. Where’s your hair clip? I swear, I’ve never known a woman who carries one around so faithfully and never wears it.”
“I want my hair to look neat,” she said, watching Becky rout through the jeans Meg had tossed onto the bed. “But the clip always bothers me after a while, so I take it out.” She caught her hair at the back of her head and held it there as Becky applied the filigree clip.
Becky stood beside her and frowned into the mirror. “Earrings,” she said, then went to her jewelry box on the dresser. “Silver and turquoise. Where... are they? Ah!”
She handed Meg a pair of large chaste silver buttons with a beadlike turquoise inset. “There you go. Now you look like a page out of an Eddie Bauer catalog. What do you think?”
Becky was right. She looked like a woman who ran a Fortune 500 company Monday through Friday and on weekends frolicked on a ranch with a handsome man in plaid flannel.
But it was a lie. And she remembered what Boradino had said about Pike appreciating honesty in a woman.
“Do not look like that,” Becky ordered, pulling several shirts out of her closet and tossing them onto the bed. She put an arm around Meg’s shoulders and pointed to the mirror. “This is the real you, Meg. Not the woman who fell for Daniel because he was the first man to notice you. He wanted the vulnerable part of you, not the strong part. You want a man who’ll appreciate all of you.”
Meg spread her arms and blew out her breath in exasperation. “The problem is I don’t know who I am. I like men, generally, but in our work with Women in Transition we hear so much about the bad ones. And when my other job is to protect people from those out to harm them, you start to see everyone as a threat. So I tried to loosen up about that, fell in love with Daniel, and look where that got me.”
“Free in the nick of time, if you ask me,” Becky said without apology. “Where’s your backbone? You weren’t the problem, he was.”
“Becky.” Meg put her hands on her friend’s shoulders and squeezed gently, apologetically. “You realize what Daniel changing his mind might do to Grandma Rooney’s endowment to your program?”
Becky nodded philosophically. “I like to think she’ll listen to reason when you explain that Daniel left you.”
Meg gave her a little shake. “Reason? Becky, we’re talking about the woman who offered blue-chip stock to Kenny Kaiser in high school so he’d take me to the prom.”
Becky smiled. “So, she’s a little...wacky. When’s she due back?”
“Next week sometime.”
Guinevere Rooney Ross, Meg’s maternal grandmother, was currently in Africa buying art for a small museum in northern California. She was in her early eighties and in good physical health. But she suffered from a form of age-related dementia that caused her to confuse and sometimes connect unrelated facts until her reality existed on a separate plane from everyone else’s.
For the past two years she’d pleaded with Meg to spend less effort on Becky’s program and more time trying to find the right man. In her mind, a woman’s happiness depended upon husband and family.
When Meg introduced her to Daniel and told her they were engaged, her grandmother had said that since Meg had done what she’d asked, she would do something for Meg. At Meg’s request, she had promised a substantial donation to the Women in Transition Center Becky had been dreaming of building for years, a place where young women without guidance or those starting over for any reason could stay until they found employment and felt secure enough to be on their own again.
“I don’t know, Becky.” Meg checked her reflection in the mirror and smoothed the jumper’s short skirt. “Grandma told me she wouldn’t do it if I chickened out.”
“But he chickened out.”
“Do you have any idea how hard it’ll be to make her understand the difference? Especially since he left with a woman fifteen years older than I am? She’ll blame me. I know she will.”
Becky put the shirts inside a black plastic suit bag. “He found her money more appealing.” Then she giggled. “And he never could get over the plate-glass window episode.”
Meg rolled her eyes. “I’m an Amazon with an inferiority complex.”
“You’re beautiful, Meg,” Becky corrected her, handing her the bag. “Remember what we’re always telling the women in the program. The past doesn’t matter. It makes no difference who tells you you’re stupid or you can’t
