Dangerous Curves Ahead: A Perfect Fit Novel (2 page)

He was right. They had met before, but he knew that he’d never touched her. “I know we didn’t sleep together.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because—” He locked gazes with her. “—I would remember falling into bed with you.”

Her eyes widened slightly and she smiled, once again drawing his attention to her lips. “Do you use that line a lot, Mikey?” She rested her hand on her cheek and studied him with interest, like she was cataloging his features and comparing the differences. “Tell me, does that smooth-operator BS really work?”

On most women, yes
, he thought. But apparently not on her. She was a ball buster. He felt one corner of his mouth curl. “Usually, but I’m not giving you a line. I know we didn’t sleep together.”

“Is that because you don’t sleep with many fat girls?”

“You’re not fat.”

“Are you blind?”

“Do you have a mirror?” he countered.

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you flirting with me?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Who are you?”

She looked amazed. “You really don’t remember me?”

“Obviously not.” But he wanted to. She made him laugh and she didn’t seem like a woman who would be easy to forget, and yet he had no idea how their pasts connected.

Her eyes passed over his face as if she was recalling something. “I thought you would have remembered me by now, but I guess you haven’t changed much at all in four years,” she said, sounding a little wistful.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, sensing her disappointment and not liking that it made him feel guilty. Four years ago? It wasn’t like they’d met last week.

“It means it’s all for the best.” She stood, grabbing her barely eaten cookie with one hand and her lemonade with the other. “Thanks for the snack, Detective.”

“Wait.” He grasped her wrist. She was walking out on
him
? “Who are you?”

“Apparently, I’m just a girl you don’t remember.”

She freed herself from his light hold and walked out of the coffee shop. He watched her until she disappeared down the sidewalk. Okay, so maybe he had dated, slept with, discarded numerous women in his thirty-two years, but he wasn’t a total jackass. All of his relationships had ended fairly amicably. He never left broken hearts behind. He never entered a relationship he couldn’t easily extract himself from. And that meant he had never been with Ellis. She looked like a nester. One of those women made to pop out four kids, bake cookies, and drive the car pool. Four years ago she would have been like toxic waste to him. To this day he shivered at the thought of being trapped with one person forever. So why was he so put out by her? And what the hell had he done to her to cause her to not like him?
Ellis.
The interaction left him feeling a little dazed, a lot annoyed, and more than slightly interested in learning more about the the girl with the cookie.

Chapter Two

Fat Girl Icons

1. Marilyn Monroe. Curvy. Blond. Sex Goddess. And rumored to be a size sixteen at her biggest.

2. Christina Hendricks. The
Mad Men
beauty gives me a girl boner.

3. Mo’Nique. You earned that Oscar with your big bad self.

4. Adele. Big. Sexy. Unapologetic.

5. Fictional Tracy Turnblad. Sigh …
Hairspray
. How I love thee.

Ellis thought about her run-in with Mike all the way back to her shop. Boom. She’d felt Boom.
Damn it.
It shook her. Why out of all the single men in the world did she have to feel it with Mike Edwards? He was the man who had once ignored her, who had forgotten her, who had slept with her sister. And yet when she saw him, her hormones went crazier than a teenage boy’s watching a dirty movie. It must be the lack of sex making her crazy. It had been six months since she broke up with Jack. Six months since she’d had any type of physical interaction with a man. Six very long dry months.

Or it could be that the crush she’d once had on him had never completely melted away, because when Mike’s big hand came out to grab her wrist her mouth went dry. It took her back four years. To the first time he’d set his hand on her skin. To that time in life when she still believed in love and loyalty and thought butterflies farted rainbows.

She shook her head.

It probably wasn’t Boom. Maybe it was just a severe case of horniness. Or indigestion. Either way she was screwed.

She returned to her shop
,
Size Me Up, and stopped to speak to Cherri, her college-aged salesgirl, in an effort to avoid the pile of work that was waiting for her.

“How’s business, kid?”

“Same as when you left, boss lady.”

“No customers?” she said with a sigh.

“No customers.”

She wasn’t expecting customers to swarm the doors in the hour she was away, but she’d hoped for at least one. Size Me Up had been open five months and Ellis still knew very little about running a clothing store. Except of course what she learned from the Internet when she Googled “how to run a clothing store.” Realistically she knew her store would take a little while to get off the ground. With no money for advertising, she had only word of mouth to rely on. On the bright side business was building. She was getting new customers every day, but she was barely breaking even. She had spent so much money on the decor, the stock, and the rent that she estimated it would take at least two years to regain her original investment. She couldn’t even afford to take home a paycheck for herself, relying instead on her now meager savings to keep her afloat.

She worked damn hard for no paycheck. The thing that made Size Me Up unique was that in addition to selling cute clothes in a large variety of sizes, Ellis—having amazing skills with a needle—altered clothing. She mostly provided the service for her shorter customers, but she had one seven-foot client who practically kissed her feet when Ellis made her a pair of jeans that covered her heels. Ellis’s personal services weren’t cheap, but when those women walked out with a garment that fit them perfectly, they were more than happy to pay the price. They were grateful and loyal, and they were the reason Ellis would continue to live on canned soup and boxed cereal.

If things stayed just the way they were, she would be fine. But if anything happened, anything at all—if the air conditioner broke, or her computer died, or the wind blew the wrong way—she would be done for. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t give Jack the satisfaction of watching her fail. She couldn’t go back to the career that made her miserable.

“I can see you thinking,” Cherri said. “You are having that daily internal battle where you’re wondering if quitting your job, dumping your asshole boyfriend, and opening this store was a mistake.”

“You know me so well,” she grinned at Cherri.

“I do,” Cherri said softly. “I want to be you when I grow up.”

Ellis could barely afford to keep Cherri on as a worker, but she would forever. Cherri was a good girl. She was mature. She worked hard, went to school full-time, had another job in her college’s library, and took care of her grandmother, but those weren’t the only reasons Ellis admired her. Cherri was probably the most beautiful woman Ellis had ever seen, with thick golden hair and a face so classic it should have been painted. But Cherri wasn’t like most twenty-one-year-old girls. She was over six feet tall, and while her body was ample and lush it was far from model-like. Far from the notice of boys her age. Ellis knew how she felt. Ignored. Like an outsider. Ellis had opened Size Me Up for the outsiders, and she would gladly forgo a paycheck to ensure Cherri had this place, too.

“I want to be you when I grow up.” She gently squeezed the girl’s arm. “Now be a good little worker and go to my office and balance the books.”

“Sorry. I can’t. I’m no good with numbers. That’s why I majored in art.”

Ellis threw back her head and whimpered. “Please. I suck at the business part of owning a small business. I just want to make pretty clothes.”

“You don’t have to worry about the books, Ellis. Just let them sit there. Of course if you do, the only clothes you’ll be making will be out of old newspapers you find on park benches. We can make it a trend. Call it homeless chic.”

“Wow.” Ellis blinked at her young friend. “That’s some effective guilt.”

“I live with a seventy-four-year-old lady. I learned from the best.”

Ellis flashed Cherri a grin before taking a huge bite of her cookie. The sugary rush gave her the strength she needed to stop whining and face the mess in her office. “I’m heading back to the grind.”

When she got back to her office, papers were still scattered all over her desk and her bookkeeping software was still up. All the numbers were the same as when she’d left half an hour ago. Apparently the office-managing elves had yet to pay her a visit.

“This is fucking depressing,” she whispered, taking yet another bite of her Black and White. The cookie was really good. Just like she’d imagined, and she didn’t even have to touch a penny from her meager savings to enjoy it. Too bad that whenever she ate one from now on she would think of the man who’d bought it for her.

Mike Edwards played a bigger part in her life than anybody had known. At first he was the hot guy in her neighborhood she fantasized about from afar. Her secret crush. Which became not so secret anymore when she pointed him out to her older sister. To this day she didn’t understand what had possessed her sister to go after him. But Dina did go after him. She brought him to Ellis’s apartment. Forced Ellis to spend time with them and then had the nerve to try to have sex with him in her bed the night of her law school graduation party.

That was the night things irrevocably changed between Ellis and her sister. After their huge argument they didn’t speak for months. Even four years later they could barely stand to be in the same room. Dina had broken her trust as a sister, but Mike … Even though he had been inside her home, even though they spent three hours alone talking about everything that came to their minds, as soon as Dina came around he had forgotten about her. He proved to her that hot guys don’t go after brainy fat girls.

She wanted to blame him for Jack. For making her feel like she was not good enough. But that wasn’t fair because that’s just what guys like him did. Maybe she should blog about the experience and call her post “The Man Who Ruined Love for Me.” But she disregarded that thought as soon as it entered her mind. It was too dramatic even for her.

“Ellis?”

She looked up to see Belinda in the doorway. Belinda became her best friend in high school. She was curvy and exotic and the most fashionable person Ellis had ever met. But besides just her best friend, she was Size Me Up’s store manager. Ellis thanked God daily for her experienced, efficient retail manager. She would have been sunk long ago without her.

“I love you, Belinda,” she blurted out. “I mean it. I’m really glad that you quit your job and took a pay cut to work for me. You know I couldn’t do this without you and I promise that as soon as we start bringing in more cash I will give you a huge raise.”

“I rather have a shrine built to my awesomeness,” the redhead grinned. “But honestly, honey, you know I’d rather work for you than that old bitch who was draining the life out of me. That combined with the much shorter commute is worth the shitty pay.”

“I really wish I could pay you more,” she said seriously.

“I know.” Belinda sighed after hearing that promise for the hundredth time. “I won’t leave here until we go down in flames, and we won’t. So stop stressing so much. The customers love this place. We’re going to be fine.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” Ellis mumbled, feeling slightly better.

“Well, boss lady.” Belinda glanced at the clock. “I came in here to remind you that if you don’t leave right now, you’re going to be late for dinner at your parents’ house.”

“Shit.” Ellis looked at the clock and then at her calendar. “Shit. Was that tonight?”

She wasn’t sure if she could tolerate a dinner with her parents (her mother) after the day she’d had.

“Yes, and hurry before Phillipa calls here.”

“I’m going.” She stood, shoving the last bit of cookie in her mouth before running out the door.

*   *   *

Instead of driving to her parents’ cottage she decided to walk. It gave her a chance to burn off the cookie she’d inhaled and get reacquainted with the town she had left ten years ago. Rhode Island. Boston. Manhattan. The whole time she was away pursuing a career she didn’t want she knew that something was missing in her life. It took a brutal breakup with Jack to make her realize that this place was what was missing in her life. Durant was a college town. A cool place with dozens of funky shops and cafés, an expansive green where new bands played every Saturday night, and young idealistic kids filling the streets. But it was more than that. At its heart Durant was a small town, with locals who cared about one another and a sense of community that she had a hard time finding elsewhere.

She opened her shop on St. Lucy Street because it was the lifeline of the small city, and even though she had been away for so long not much had changed. Mrs. Underwood still ran the yarn shop. Postal worker Mr. Conner still stopped into every shop on his daily route, and the guy in the purple bandanna still played his guitar on the patio of the Don Luca Café for lunchgoers every day.

It was good to be home. And good to be near her parents again. Even though they sometimes drove her crazy, she’d rather be near them than anywhere else.

“Ellis? Is that you?” she heard as she entered her parents’ home.

“Yes,” she answered, hearing that question for the second time that day.

Her father looked up from his spot on the couch, not making eye contact, just giving her a once-over to confirm it really was her.

“Hi, Daddy.” She sat next to him, studying her dashing father’s ensemble for the day. Blue collared shirt, matching blue tie, and pajama pants. “Snoopy pants?”

“I’ve always liked Snoopy,” he said not looking at her. “
Peanuts
premiered in eight newspapers the day I was born. Snoopy did not appear until the third strip. He wasn’t identified by name until November fourth of that year.”