If the Shoe Fits by Megan Mulry Read Free Book Online

(now a crumpled ball) on top of the decimated breakfast tray. She grabbed her purse, put on her long camel hair coat, tied a deliciously soft, hand-knit rabbit fur scarf around her neck ( Ugh! ), and tried to get on with her day without finding sexual overtones in every object she happened upon.
    That proved impossible.
    After an hour of sightseeing—a country antique barn where the wide-plank wall boards were worn yet coarse as she let her fingertips trail along and the autumn air was brisk, moist, and alive in her nostrils and then a local artisanal wool factory where the pervasive, bittersweet odor of lanolin conjured up the sensory memory of Devon’s Barbour waxed-cotton coat… he had been wearing it on the way to the hotel last night… where was it?—Sarah finally admitted defeat.
    More or less disgusted with herself, Sarah begged off lunch and headed back to her hotel room to rest. The car and driver her father had hired brought her back to Amberley with instructions to return in two hours’ time to fetch Nelson and Jane from the charming town nearby. Sarah was completely exhausted and didn’t think Bronte would appreciate a wobbling maid of honor, teetering and worn out (from sleeplessness and naughtiness) by her side at the altar. She stopped by the front desk to schedule a wake-up call for two that afternoon, and made her way with heavy, methodical steps up the luxurious, red-carpeted, medieval stone staircase.
    She opened her hotel room and was assaulted by a wave of ethereal spring scents—peonies, roses, lilac, gardenia, sweet pea, and ranunculus. An enormous bouquet of outrageously expensive flowers sat regally atop the round drum table under the bay window at the far end of the room. Sarah walked slowly toward the arrangement, bending down to unzip her short boots and remove them on the way. Her stomach began to patter… she had skipped lunch, she reminded herself, trying to remain rational.
    The heavy-stock ivory Smythson envelope tucked into the decadent arrangement simply read, “Miss James,” penned in a heavy, blue fountain ink. She reached for the card and refused to give in to the insane yearning to smell the envelope before opening it. She slid her index finger under the crisp edge where he had licked it and slowly opened the stiff flap. She pulled out the rigid card and smiled at the simple message.
    “Sincerely hope primary definition of ‘weekend’ includes Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Yrs, DH”
    Or she thought it said DH ; it was more like a few rapid circles of ink with a quick slash right across the middle of the whole mess. She put the note on the table, letting the corner release from her finger with a firm snap onto the mahogany surface. She stood there for a while just staring at the blooms, each one looking as though it had been chosen specifically to provoke: languorous, lush, bursting. Then she thought, unbidden and sarcastically, that Devon Heyworth was probably one of the most beloved customers known to British florists.
    She pulled one flopping peony the size of a large grapefruit from the arrangement and brought it to her bedside table. Pouring a small amount of water out of the carafe and into the delicate drinking glass, she trimmed the stem of the peony with her thumbnail so the entire fragrant bloom rested easily on the rim of the small glass. Sarah stared at the pale pinks and delicate whites of the flower and thought of her mother. What would it be like to have a mother on a day like this? Someone to maybe smile and hug and confide in.
    After her mother died, Sarah spent years getting straight As and doing everything in her power to impress her father with her youthful, ambitious summer internships at the Simpson-James department store. She worked in the corporate offices and followed her father’s assistant, Wendy Walton, around with slavish devotion. On her sixteenth birthday, Sarah realized that no amount of “best behavior” was going to wrest her father out