Hostile Makeover by Wendy Wax Read Free Book Online Page B

shy Tommy Horowitz, but the message she’d been hoping for proved to be . . . not exactly what she’d been hoping for.
    “I understood you taking off while your father was in the hospital,”
Ross Morgan’s voice boomed.
“But where are you now? Shopping? Accessorizing?”
    OK, so it had been a lucky guess.
    “I can hardly wait to hear.”
    Shelley signed her name to the credit card slip, but her attention was riveted by Ross Morgan’s matter-of-fact tone.
    “We both know I can’t fire you. But part of your salary’s coming out of my pocket now, and I think it’s time you started earning it.”
    There was a pause and in the brief silence Shelley could hear her anger build. It was loud and crackling and it burned away the icy apathy that had gripped her all week.
    Seeing her face, Nina reached for Shelley’s shopping bags. “I’ll, uh, just step over there and look at the, uh, ties. Let me know when you’re done.”
    Shelley barely heard her. Every one of her faculties was completely focused on the voice coming to her through the receiver. And the asinine things it was saying.
    “I’m assigning you your own client list, and I need you to come in and get started. Tomorrow. In the morning. Like a normal employee.”
There was another pause and then,
“I’ll expect you in my office at nine A.M. ”
    Shelley waited for her head to explode. It felt as if it might just shoot right off her shoulders, kind of like those cartoon eruptions that were accompanied by the sound of train whistles.
    Ross Morgan was an interfering, business-stealing pain in the butt, and she could hardly wait to tell him so.
    She’d get on it first thing in the morning. Right after she finished shopping. If she was going on the offensive, she was going to do it in a knockout outfit.

chapter 7
    T oo keyed up to sleep, Shelley spent the night lying in bed with her jaw clenched and her fists gripping the sheet while Ross Morgan’s words replayed themselves in her head.
    In the predawn light she showered and dressed, using concealer to camouflage the dark circles under her eyes and gel to tame her normally curly hair into a chignon. Standing in her walk-in closet, she pulled out the Chanel suit she’d bought, and paired it with her fabulous new Ferragamo pumps. Nana Rose’s antique pearls went around her neck.
    She suspected Ross Morgan thought that she wouldn’t show up, or that if she did, she’d come in weeping and wailing like a hysterical female. But Shelley intended to be icily genteel. Elegantly intimidating. Untouchable. Calm. In fact, she was going to do Grace Kelly with a touch of Katharine Hepburn; a persona that would allow for plenty of looking down her nose at him, even if she had to get a ladder to do it.

     
    At 8:59 she swept past Ross’s secretary, Mia, and into his office, grateful he hadn’t yet moved into her father’s office. Closing the door behind her, she posed just inside, her shoulders angled, her chin elevated. When she had his complete attention she walked to the seat across from his desk, carefully channeling both Kelly and Hepburn, then lowered herself into the chair. Crossing her ankles, she swiveled her legs to the side, folded her hands in her lap, and gave him a regal nod. She opened her mouth to begin. Only he beat her to it.
    “Queen Elizabeth,” he said.
    “What?”
    “You’re doing Queen Elizabeth, right?”
    She blinked in surprise.
    “And it was good, too. The only thing missing was that little cupped-palm wave thing.”
    Shelley clenched her teeth; she may have growled.
    “No? Let’s see . . .”
    “Ross—”
    “Audrey Hepburn in
My Fair Lady
?”
    He had to be kidding.
    “
After
the transformation, but before he starts to appreciate her.”
    This was not happening.
    “Am I close? I don’t know why, but I just can’t seem to pin it down.”
    Good grief. They were playing charades.
    “I know!” He pointed a finger at her. “It’s Barbara Parkins, isn’t it? In
Valley of the