Little Miss Petty

Chapter 24

“Brené Brown Dammit Quit!”

Upon hearing her first and middle names, she quit scratching the back corner of the love seat. I could see where Jim Davis got the idea for some of his Garfield cartoons. Now the picture of innocence, she started licking her paw to wash her face.

“Uh-huh. I saw it. You’re not as slick as you think you are.”

She gave me her cutest look and did the slow blinks that the internet told me meant “I love you” in cat.

“Yes, yes. I love you, too. And I’ll get you a scratching post, but . . . we may have a roommate one of these days, so you’re going to have to learn to behave.”

She rounded the love seat, jumped up to the cushion, and curled into a ball. No concern of hers if I wanted to add a roommate.

My phone buzzed.

“Could be her right now,” I said as I checked my phone.

Malone.

“Stark, I’ve got good news and bad news.”

At the sound of his voice, my pulse was off to the races. “Bad news first.”

“I’m not going to be back until the gala.”

“Booooo. What’s the good news?”

“Work seems to be under control. Finally.”

“Excellent. Do that forensic accounting voodoo that you do so well.”

“You really have no idea what I do, do you?”

“Only the vaguest of notions. I mean, I know about accounting, but I keep thinking you’re some kind of number medical examiner performing nerd autopsies.”

He laughed. “I miss you.”

“You miss my purple bra.”

“Well, yes, but I miss you. I miss whatever perfume it is you wear—”

“J’adore.”

“I miss your smile, your sense of humor, and the fact you know how to do terrifying things like break into my apartment.”

“That’s the tip of the iceberg, Malone. I have all sorts of talents you haven’t even discovered yet.”

He took in a ragged breath. “Can you show me sometime?”

“Sure. If you’re a very good boy.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” I smiled in a way I hadn’t since my teen years.

“And we can have a Finnegan, when I get back?”

His response startled me. How did he know about Havisham’s bar? “What?”

“A Finnegan, a mulligan for a mulligan.”

“I’m sure you’re speaking English, but once again your words don’t make sense to me.”

He chuckled. “It’s a golf term.”

“Oh, I don’t play that game.”

“If you were Lucius Malone’s grandchild, you would, but basically it’s a do-over for a do-over.”

“Third time’s a charm?”

“One can hope. Bottom line: I don’t care if the apartment building is collapsing around us, the next time I kiss you, I fully intend to make love to you. Thoroughly.”

I shivered. “How thoroughly is ‘thoroughly’?”

“I’m going to ruin you for other men.”

And then you’re going to leave me.

I shook that thought away. No, he and I were going to enter a short-term, mutually beneficial relationship. “And how do you know I’m not going to ruin you?”

“Oh, Stark. I’m counting on it.”

That Sunday night, it was time to start a new module in my online paralegal education. I’d turned in my last project, so Legal Research, Part One, was in my rearview mirror, as were such scintillating topics as law office management, estate planning/probate, criminal law, and family law.

Probably best not to mix those last two. Unless I wanted to be a consigliere, which might require a course entitled Criminal Family Law.

All in all, I’d already taken seven of the thirteen courses I needed for my paralegal certificate and was on pace to complete the program at the end of the year—thanks to adding an extra course here and there.

My next two courses would be Civil Litigation, Part One—who knew civil litigation was so vast that it needed two parts?—and Tort Law. Sadly, tort law appeared to have nothing to do with tortes.

What had I learned from these past few months? I still preferred letters and words to numbers, and it was just as well I had never gone to law school. I found the subject of law intriguing, but I liked keeping my own hours and not having to go to an office each day.

In an odd sort of way, I suppose I owed Ken a thank-you note for sending me down a different path, a career path I liked a whole heckuva lot better than I would’ve liked working in an office and/or trotting off to court, which was, sadly, more boring than television and movies would have you believe.

Far better to have the flexibility of doing both private investigation and paralegal work from home than to be a buttoned-up lawyer.

But no thank-you note for the Douchecanoe.

As Little Miss Petty, I had a lot of better options for him, and as soon as I figured out how, I just might become my own best client. In the meantime, however, I needed a fancy dress for this gala.

I knew just the place to get one.

“Stella Bella Mortadella!” my nana said as I walked through the door of Shindigs and Soirées, her boutique shop that specialized in weddings and other formal events.

As of late, she’d been doing brisk business in quinceaneras, partially thanks to some work I’d done for a bilingual lawyer down in Buckhead.

Her added success probably explained her excitement to see me as well as the extra few seconds of her hug.

“It shouldn’t take needing something for you to come see your grandmother,” she chided, just as I’d expected she would.

“I know, I know. It’s been . . . a lot.”

“That Ken. I never liked him,” she said.

“You’ve made that abundantly clear over the years,” I said. “Would it help if I said you were right and I was wrong?”

Her brow furrowed. “It doesn’t help, but . . . I’m not mad at the acknowledgment that your nana does know a thing or two—especially since you had me open up the shop just for you.”

“Thanks, Nana.”

She shrugged. “That’s what grandmothers do. Or what they try to do if only their prickly granddaughters will let them.”

I took in her earnest brown eyes and sleek navy sheath dress. She colored her hair to an ashy blond and kept it just long enough to graze her shoulders. She’d be seventy-four in September, but she said she wasn’t ready to retire just yet.

“I’ll try to do better at asking my nana for favors. Do you have anything suitable for a gala?”

“Which one?”

“The Malone Gala.”

She gave a low whistle. “I’ve never managed to snag an invite to that one, but I should have something. I can’t promise anything from a major designer, though.”

“I don’t need a major designer.”

She tilted her head to one side. “No, but I need you to look good if I want to attract the attention of everyone there, now don’t I?”

Always both thinking ahead and thinking of her bottom line, that was my nana.

She led the way from the front hallway down to a room that had probably once been a dining room for some wealthy Marietta family. The hardwood floors creaked under my feet in a familiar way.

The formalwear market had changed many times over the years, but Nana’s storefront had changed very little.

She now owned rather than rented the Queen Anne house a few blocks off the square, but it still sported buttercream-colored walls, all the original fireplaces, a rainbow of gowns on the bottom floor with a bridal boutique upstairs, and the lingering scent of mulberry potpourri.

“Okay, summer gala. Over at the fancy Hilton, I’m guessing?”

“You know it.” I touched a satiny skirt. Nana smacked my hand as she must’ve done a hundred times before. “A girl gets Cheeto dust on one dress, and she’s never allowed to touch any of them ever again?”

“Correct,” Nana said. “Besides, you don’t know what looks good on you.”

I sighed dramatically. “Fine. Since I’m expecting to get the friends and family discount, you can pick out my fancy dress. I promise that I’m only seventy-five percent sure I won’t wear Converse with it.”

Nana pointed at a chair by the fireplace. “You have a seat right there, and I’ll pick out a few things that could work.”

She didn’t ask for my size; she didn’t have to. Fortunately for me, she didn’t overstock sizes six and under to the neglect of the larger ones. She told me once that she’d learned long ago that the zeroes and twos often ended up on the clearance rack, so no need to overdo it.

As I watched her efficiently swan about the room, pausing occasionally to put a dress on the rack by my chair, I thought, not for the first time, that she and Havisham would probably get along swimmingly. My only hesitation in introducing them? I didn’t need them to join forces.

Then again, if they were running the world, it might be a better situation for all of us. Since they couldn’t apply themselves to world domination, however, they’d probably focus on me, and I didn’t need that.

After flitting around the room and even down the hall, she had accumulated five dresses for me to try. She then gently touched my cheek, turning my face from one side to the other. “No makeup. Good girl.”

As if I would risk a tirade on the scourge of foundation stains on her nice dresses. No thank you.

“Hop in there and let me see how that first one looks on you.”

I took a floor-length sour-apple-green sheath into a small room beside the fireplace where I’d been sitting. The small space had once been a pantry of sorts, but Nana had converted it into a dressing room.

The dress slid down my skin as though it had been molded to my shape. There was just one problem. “Nana, how am I supposed to wear a bra with this?”

Her turn to sigh.

We sighed a lot when we were together, but the overall number of sighs had decreased exponentially since I turned twenty.

“I forgot about your bazombas, but I guess you could wear one of those adhesive bras. Come out here and let me see.”

I took another look at the strappy back of the dress in the mirror before returning to Nana.

Her brow furrowed. Her lips pursed as though holding pins that weren’t there as she studied the dress. She stepped back and twirled her finger. I slowly spun.

“No. Try the electric blue.”

I took that dress in, then removed the green one before placing it back on its hanger.

The blue was a shorter sheath. No worries about a bra with it, thanks to its conservative neckline, wide straps, and closed back.

Done deal, so far as I was concerned, but Nana said, “Too conservative.”

“C’mon, Nana. Isn’t ‘conservative’ exactly what I need for that crowd?”

She shook her head. “I think it’ll be the purple.”

Purple.

The color reminded me of Malone, and the memory of Malone caused my pulse to quicken.

I turned around so she could unzip me and took the purple dress with me into the dressing room.

“Purple” didn’t really do the dress justice. It was a luscious almost-eggplant color with gauzy layers of fabric. Low cut, but it had wide straps. Full skirt, but it cinched around the waist and had a daring slit.

And pockets.

“This is the one, Nana,” I said.

“Come here and let me be the judge of that.”

I turned to the right and then to the left, watching the fabric swish with my hands in my pockets. The girls—or my bazombas as my nana liked to call them—were out and proud. “No need.”

“Stella Angelina Stark, let me see.”

Swallowing a sigh, I stepped outside, and her brow smoothed. She nodded. “Yes, the purple.”

“Like I said—”

“Turn! Perfect, and I shouldn’t have to hem it more than an inch.”

“Nana, it’s fashionable to drag the ground. And I’m going to wear my Converse anyway.”

“Not with that slit, you aren’t. Get your stuff and come over to the mirror where we do alterations. I have a pair of shoes that will work with that dress.”

My lip extended in a pout, but I followed her and did what she said.

After all, she was the expert in formalwear.

She brought me a pair of strappy wedge sandals, and I loved her for remembering I could do a wedge but not a heel.

Then she had me stand on the platform for what felt like an hour but couldn’t have been fifteen minutes as she pinned, stepped back, then stepped forward and pinned again.

“Oh, I forgot to mention I need it for Tuesday night.”

“Always the last minute with you, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t get the invitation until Friday.” I put my hands in the pockets of the dress.

“Stop that! It messes with the length. You can play with your pockets on Tuesday.”

I put my hands over my head. Nana indulged in our love language: sighing. “Put your hands at your sides, please.”

I did as I was told, and she added one more pin before declaring the dress ready for hemming. While I was in the makeshift dressing room, she asked, “And how did you get an invitation? Surely no gentleman would wait until the last minute.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her Malone was no gentleman, but Nana didn’t need to know about our plans. Besides, he was a gentleman in all the ways that counted.

And who the heck ever said I was a lady?

In the end I settled for, “I haven’t known the gentleman that long.”

“Interesting,” she said as I exited, carefully handing the dress over to her.

“If you must know, he’s the grandson of Lucius Malone.”

One of her eyebrows practically kissed the ceiling. “Oh. Well then. If you marry him, you’ll be back in here a lot. Those Malones have more money than they can count.”

I bit my lip to keep from reminding Nana that I had no intention of marrying anyone ever. It was an old argument, one I was still inclined to agree with, but it wasn’t worth having that argument with someone who made a living from weddings.

Even if she didn’t believe in happily ever after herself.

“Would you like for me to see if I can get you a ticket?” I asked her.

Now her eyes twinkled. “If you get me a ticket, I won’t say a word if you wear Converse under that dress. I’ll even adjust the hem so you can.”

“You’re on,” I said. “Wait. Does that mean I have to put the dress back on so you can change where the hem’s going?”

“Yep.”