The Lingerie Shop (2 page)

Sell doesn’t have to be a four-letter word. You used to know that.

Madison blinked. Now, of all times, her sister would choose to be snide? Alice had great hook lines, though. She never started a letter with the traditional “Dear Madison.” Her handwritten script had flourishes like Thomas Jefferson’s. She’d done cursive that way since the eighth grade.

I’m not being snide. Sell connects to two other really important four-letter words. Want. Need. But I think the word that best describes it is
provide
. Did you ever look that one up in the Encarta dictionary? The legal term means to require something in advance as a condition or as part of a contract. The non-legal term is to supply somebody with something, or be a source of something wanted or needed by somebody. Sets off something in your gut, doesn’t it?

Madison swallowed. “Stop it, Alice,” she muttered.

Fuck is another four-letter word, and it gets a bad rap. Cock, cunt, come . . . Do you think God and the Devil were playing a word game that day? “See how many naughty words can start with
C
, and whoever wins gets to handle everything connected to sex. Go!”

You know the Devil won that one, hands down. God’s still pissed about it. Probably why He started the rumor sex was a sin.

Madison choked on a laugh.

Getting tired, so have to cut to the chase. Here’s the thing, MadGirl. Great selling isn’t about tricking someone into buying crap. It’s about helping them get something they truly need that adds value to their lives.

“Oh, Alice.” The ache in her throat increased as her voice echoed in the waiting silence of the store. Waiting for a mistress who would never return, who’d known how to turn a lingerie store into an adult Disneyland, complete with the enchantment, promise of princes and happily-ever-afters. She’d told Alice that once, only then she’d had derision dripping off every word. Now she thought it simply as it was. Truth.

I’m leaving you my store. You know that, but what you’re going to find out from my executor when you call him about this letter is that I set aside enough money for you to run the store for the next several years. If you don’t want to keep it after a year, sell the inventory and seek another path. But promise me you’ll give it a year. I’m betting you’ll find it easier to leave your life in Boston than you expect.

How right she was about that would have been unsettling, except the subsequent paragraphs left Madison even more flummoxed.

This next bit is the awkward part. My passion was getting people in touch with their sexual selves, but we’re sisters, so talking about sex beyond jokes and generalities has a certain
Eww
factor, right? Before you turn red as a tomato, think how bad this would be if I were your brother!

Madison snorted, but then her fingers tightened on the page.

I know you’re a sub, sis. I knew it even before I dragged you to that first BDSM club in Chicago. I made it sound like a silly adventure to get you there, but I thought it might help you come to terms with it, stop repressing it. You were so mesmerized; barely moving, clutching your drink, hypnotized by everything you saw.

It came back in perfect clarity. Madison’s eyes had clung to the female submissives. The one who knelt at her Master’s feet. The one who’d been restrained, her cries of pain and pleasure drawn forth by the slap of the flogger, a male hand, the paddle. The one who passed within three feet of her, wearing a collar and leash her Master had wrapped around his hand, his other palm intimately low on her hip, guiding her.

She’d stared and yearned for a language she understood but couldn’t speak herself.

As a teenager, Madison had devoured the old bodice rippers on her mother’s bookshelves. The more contemporary romances left her detached and, in the dark corners of her mind, Madison knew why. When she masturbated, she’d see the pirate captain tying her to his bunk, the king using his strong hands to push open her thighs, a cop forcing her to her knees with an insistent tap of his baton and feeding his cock between her lips. She’d gush around her fingers, driven to climax by those imaginings.

Sitting in the club booth, surrounded by all the sensory input of Dominance and submission, the mantra of “at last, at last” had pounded inside her heart. She’d wanted to be every woman there embracing submissive pleasures.

What Alice hadn’t known was that Madison had agreed to go that night because she’d been nursing the hope that a garish, stark reality would drive the need away, a need that had become worse over the years with each failed relationship. No matter how hard she worked at each one, the man she tried to love still left. She always fell short.

Choosing the wrong guy is different from being wrong about yourself, MadGirl.
Stop trying to prove you could do something to make Dad love us more. I loved her, but Mom was weak. She destroyed herself because she thought it was her fault Dad was an asshole who wanted younger women. Don’t be her. Stop trying to be what every guy, Master or not, wants you to be. Embrace who you are for
you
. Anything else is a pointless soul-suck.

“Goddamn you,” Madison murmured. This was why she’d distanced herself from her sister during the last two years. Alice had been a hammer, relentlessly pounding on the idea that Madison kept making the wrong decisions when it came to relationships. But none of that mattered anymore, did it? A point underscored by the last paragraph.

Dominance and submission isn’t one-size-fits-all. You have to make choices. Giving yourself to a Master is an incredibly special gift. I loved you more than anyone, MadGirl. Given how many cool, amazing people I met in my absurdly short life, that’s saying quite a lot. You always did underestimate what kind of gem you are. Maybe you’ll get a chance to shine here and see what I always saw in you.

Be good, sweet sis. But not too good. Remember me by showing your “naughty bits” once in a while.

Shit. Madison put the letter on the counter and slid down the wall behind it, giving in to the hard sobs.

Madison had been up in Boston, selling stocks and bonds, managing people’s investments. Alice had called once a week and Madison always answered, but she’d stayed passive-aggressive, cordial, distant. As a result, she hadn’t caught the vital clues. Alice’s allergy attacks that came more frequently, the colds and flu bugs. Her sister had been getting weaker and sicker.

Then, a couple months ago, Alice had called on a Thursday, not their usual day. In her matter-of-fact way, she’d said if Madison could come home that weekend, she’d really like to give her a quick last hug. She also wanted Madison to go through her collection of high-end, well-sterilized sex toys to see if she wanted any of them before they had to be boxed up and dumped. Incredibly enough, the Senior Citizens’ Auxiliary at the hospital wouldn’t accept them as donations for their thrift shop.
You’d think they’d realize there’s nothing better for cardiovascular health than a good daily orgasm . . .

Her lips twitched at Alice’s acid observation now. During that call, Madison had simply been stunned. She’d said something absurd like, “Okay, let me check my schedule, I have this meeting, but I know I can get out of that . . .”

Alice had always known her so well, no matter how much Madison hated that. She’d merely listened. “No worries, MadGirl. Come if you can.”

Once off the phone that day, Madison’s brain had cleared. She’d called her boss, told Barbara what was happening. Barbara said she had to at least come in Friday and handle her scheduled client meetings, because Barbara had a tee time with board members. Madison refused. Barbara told her she’d be fired, and Madison retorted if she was that replaceable, Barbara could keep the damn job.

Just like that, she’d walked away from a career she’d excelled at for five years. Crazy, right? But it was as if she’d been treading water in a pool, blinded to the fact dry land was as close as the nearest ladder. Until Alice had arranged a wake-up call in the form of a simple deathbed request.

Come give me a quick hug.

If the memory had theme music, it would be something sad, wistful. Instead, the overtly erotic strains of “Boléro” injected Dudley Moore and a running Bo Derek into Madison’s brain, jarring her fully into the present.

She’d forgotten that music played when someone came into the store. Alice had the classics like “Boléro,” “Somewhere in Time” and “Claire de Lune” on the playlist, as well as sultry Latin numbers by Enrique Iglesias and pure fuck-me-now Barry White and Boyz II Men songs. She’d also thrown Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” and “Tonight’s the Night” into the mix because, well, why not?

Once the door triggered the music, the whole song would play unless someone else came in. Each time the door opened or closed, a new song started, letting Alice know she had a customer arriving or departing. If there were no new customers after a song played in its entirety, there would be silence. Madison had asked Alice why she didn’t set it up so the music played constantly, and her sister said there was value in silence as well.

Honest to God, Alice’s choices gave the store a personality all its own. Madison wouldn’t be surprised if she could hear the store breathing.

She yanked her attention back to the more important issue. She wasn’t alone, and she was hiding behind the register counter. She hadn’t expected lingerie shopping to be popular at seven a.m. Jesus, she hadn’t even flipped the O
PEN
sign over or turned on lights, but having worked sales before, she knew customers were as bad as kindergarteners when it came to paying attention to details like those.

She should pop up from behind the counter like a macabre cartoon.
“Yes, how may I help you?”
Instead, she wiped her eyes and rose into view in a way that made it look as though she’d been bending below the counter to get something out of the cabinet, rather than pushing herself up the wall as if her weight had tripled since she’d landed there. “I’m sorry, we’re not open yet.”

She said that before she took a look at her first customer. A good thing, since she might have stammered. He wasn’t the type of client she’d expected, and not merely because he was a “he.”

In his early to mid-twenties, this guy looked like he’d escaped the cover shoot for a romance novel. His stonewashed jeans, belted at his lean waist, defined a superior tight ass, well displayed because he was turned away from her, examining the merchandise on the rounder closest to him. The rolled-up sleeves of his denim shirt exposed tanned forearms. He had good shoulders—wide enough for his age. As he grew older and muscle weight thickened, they’d probably get even nicer. She expected beneath those clothes his body would be well sculpted by the gym. Guys who worked out hard moved like wild animals, with easy grace and strength.

His sandy brown hair brushed his collar and brow, and when he glanced toward her beneath an attractive scattering of strands, his blue eyes reminded her of the sky. “Hi. I’m Troy. I work next door.”

“Oh.” Not a customer, then, even though he’d been perusing a rack of bras, fingering a lacy D-cup with speculative interest and no self-consciousness. Cross-dresser? Before their falling out, she’d spent plenty of time in Alice’s world, brushing shoulders with everyone from transgender to cross-dressers. As a result, she didn’t think he fit the type. He wore his clothes without any excessive fashion sense. Simple, basic guy clothes, blues and denims, work shoes. Though a cross-dressing straight guy was possible, his gaze marked her with typical unoffensive hetero interest. Interest in what she looked like out of her clothes, not
how
she wore them.

“Nice to meet you.” She regretted her wooden tone, but he didn’t seem fazed by it, approaching the counter to extend his hand. She suppressed the urge to take another swipe at her face. Yeah, that would be nice. Wipe her nose, then offer her hand.

In Boston, her client list had included exacting millionaires and powerful corporate businessmen. She could handle an employee from . . . what was next door? A hardware store. In this artsy downtown area of Matthews, a quaint municipality on the outskirts of the much bigger city of Charlotte, all the stores were kitschy, boutique-type ventures. The hardware store, the brief glimpse she’d had of it, was a historic leftover from eighty years ago, maintaining the original brick façade in front. It was still run like one of the old-timey general stores, advertising horse feed and strawberries in season, as well as small engine repair.

Alice had relocated here from a Charlotte strip mall a few years ago. Because of their falling out, Madison hadn’t had a chance to meet her new neighbors.

“When we heard you knocking around, Mr. Scott told me to come over and see if you need anything.”

Troy still had his hand out, and she was staring at him as if he’d sprung out of the walls. With a jerk, she lifted her hand to clasp his. He closed his fingers over hers, held them. He had a rough palm, a warm grip, and those eyes never left her face. “We’re so sorry about Alice. She was an incredible person, and she loved you so much.”

Wow. He zeroed right in on the personal, leaving her nowhere to hide. Madison blinked, hard, and unconsciously squeezed his hand, to find her own squeezed right back. She’d been dealing with lawyers, city clerks, real estate people, all of whom talked about Alice in distant niceties. This man was as much a stranger as they were, but his obvious personal connection to Alice, physical and emotional, made her hungry to maintain the contact. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself, but Troy saved her from that. He covered her hand with his other one, holding hers sandwiched between them and giving her an excuse to keep it in that position.

“She left me this place,” Madison said. “I’m not sure how to run it. I mean, I know how to run it. I’ve been in sales, but . . .”

Good grief, Madison.
She shrugged to get him to let her go and put both hands on the counter, pressing her palms against the cool glass. Beneath it was an array of nipple clamps and clit jewelry, displayed as elegantly as any New York diamond district’s offerings. She was pretty sure some of them had actual diamonds, since one had a four-figure price tag. For nipple jewelry? In contrast, on top of the counter, Alice had a basket of plastic hopping penises, breasts and bright red lips. Madison took a closer look. Okay, those weren’t lips. At least not the mouth kind. A cheerful yellow bow on the basket drew attention to the contents.