By Design Read online

  “Are you going to throw up now?” Trish called after her.

  But Emmie returned after only a moment, loosely cradling her laptop in one arm. Trish squinted fearfully, expecting her to drop it on the hardwood floor, but Emmie made it back to her seat with the laptop—and her wineglass—intact. She put the glass on the floor and opened the computer.

  “Are you googling Juliet?”

  “Circle-O.”

  “Circle what?”

  “O. As in ‘circle o’ friends.’ It’s new. There’s a group for our high school. I joined it but never check it much.”

  And after much impaired typing and backspacing and retyping, Emmie managed to correctly spell Juliet’s name in the search box on the social media site. Both women peered at the screen with bated breath, as if waiting for the revelation of the ages.

  “There! There!” Emmie pointed. “That’s her!”

  “Click!”

  Emmie clicked, but no information was visible. “I’d have to ‘wave’ at her and then she’d have to ‘wave’ back, and then I can find out about her.”

  “What a stupid site,” Trish declared, but paused for only a moment. “Well? Do it!”

  “I don’t know. This is Juliet freakin’ Winslow . . .”

  “Oh for God’s sake.” And Trish reached over and clicked on the “wave” button for her.

  “Dammit, Trish!”

  “She’s just a person, Emmie! And we’re nosy. Nosy wimmins must be satisfied.”

  Emmie and Trish stared at the screen.

  “Now what?” Trish whispered, as if afraid to disturb the computer.

  “Now . . .” Emmie whispered back, still staring at the screen, “we order a pizza.”

  “Hey, baby.”

  Emmie skidded to a halt on her front walk and raised her eyes to the early-morning overcast sky in a silent why-me plea to the heavens. Her head still throbbing and her stomach gurgling from the overindulgence portion of her wallow the previous day, the last thing she needed to face was The Return of Kyle. But there he was, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, who, judging by his carefully posed “casual” slouch against her tan Honda Civic, was expecting to be “on” again. As usual.

  She took a fortifying breath, marched over, and elbowed him sharply in his side. “Get your butt off my car, Yates.”

  “Ow! Sheesh, Emmaline!”

  “Don’t call me that. You know I hate that.”

  Undaunted, he slid over to the back driver’s side door and grinned. “Miss me?”

  The nerve.

  Emmie shot back without hesitation, “Nope, can’t say that I have.”

  And she meant it. Emmie had fallen for his sly grin and his wolfish good looks almost a year ago, and he had a certain charm that got her to overlook his irritating fake-cowboy persona and tendency to flirt with everything in a skirt that crossed his path. But when he was out her life for a bit, she found that she was able to function perfectly well without him. In her more honest moments, she even was able to admit that sometimes the past ten months had felt like nothing more than one long booty call.

  “Ouch. Harsh,” he muttered, tugging at the denim shirt he had slung over his faded T-shirt and tucking his fingertips into the front pockets of his jeans; his pants were so tight that was all that would fit. “Why’re you being like that?”

  “Oh, gee, I dunno. Let me think,” Emmie drawled, putting a finger to her lips as she pretended to consider the question. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with, oh, somebody named Caitlynn, would it?”

  “Aw, c’mon!” Kyle laughed, but it was a weak one. “You were giving me such a hard time, I figured we were broken up.”

  “Oh, no—don’t you put this on me. We have one argument, and you turn right around and find some cheesy little ex-cheerleader at the bar? Tacky, Kyle.” She hesitated. “Not like I care, mind you.”

  “Yeah, you care.”

  Kyle turned on his megawatt you-want-me smile, and although Emmie only glared back, she felt her resolution crumbling. Dammit, she hated herself when she fell for that grin of his. She hated to admit it, but it was actually kind of sexy. Her expression must have showed the change in her, because Kyle suddenly grew more confident—if that was at all possible.

  “Come on, let’s go inside. We can have lunch. Or, you know, not.” He leered at her suggestively.

  “I have to go to work, like most people. Unlike you, apparently.”

  “I’m not on the schedule today.”

  Kyle’s brother owned a small used-car lot, and he paid Kyle mainly to keep him company while they waited for customers to wander in. Most of the time they sat around with their feet up on the desk, talking about what kind of changes they would make if they ran the country.

  He sighed. “All right. Your loss. Catch you later?” he asked, tapping the end of her upturned nose. Emmie was never sure if she liked or hated his little endearing gesture.

  “Maybe. Call first!” she shouted after him. He waved over his shoulder as he sauntered to his truck; Emmie checked her watch, gasped at the time, and jumped into her car.

  Chapter 2

  “Is he there?” Trish whispered, even though she was safe at home.

  “In the back,” Emmie murmured into her phone. “Don’t worry about it. He’s counting his color wheels. But talk fast—I think he’s going to drag me to a consultation soon.”

  “Oh, goody—Wilma’s leash remains strong, then.”

  “I beg your pardon. I’ll have you know he let me visit the Nottings about their living room upholstery just yesterday.”

  Trish gasped. “Wilma allowed you to meet with some clients all by yourself?”

  “I know!” Emmie enthused sarcastically. “It’s only been four years!”

  Emmie’s boss’s real name was John Wilman, but Emmie and Trish had nicknamed him Wilma at the first sight of his ginger-colored, flip-front, really, really bad toupee. To refer to him by Fred Flintstone’s wife’s name was childish, perhaps, but John Wilman was an insufferably vain stuffed shirt—and a holy terror of a boss. A little sniggering behind his back helped Emmie get through the day.

  “And were you able to handle the Nothings?” Trish asked.

  “Nottings, darling. Nottings.”

  “These are the people who only want beige walls, beige carpets, and beige furniture, right? I stand by the name.”

  “I think that’s why Wilma let me off my leash. They were going to choose beige or beige or beige from all the beige fabric swatches I presented to them. What could possibly go wrong?”

  “What’d they pick?”

  “Beige.”

  “Good work. Hey, did you get a reply from the Great and Glorious Juliet?”

  “Oh my God!” Emmie gasped. “I’d forgotten about that!”

  Trish laughed. “No more wine for you.”

  Emmie glanced over her shoulder. No sign of Wilma. She furtively loaded Circle-O and signed in. “Oh, no!” She half laughed as she winced. “Juliet waved back.”

  “I told you she wouldn’t refuse, ya dummy.”

  “I feel like a stalker.”

  “That’s only if you start sending her a thousand messages. So you’re linked up on Circle Jerk or whatever. Big deal. You don’t actually have to have direct contact.”

  “Right. I just want to read her profile . . . like a silent stalker.”

  “So what did you get up to last night?”

  Emmie flinched. “Oh, you know . . . nothing much.”

  “Nothing much named Kyle?”

  “Yeahhh.”

  “So he’s back?”

  “Yeahhh.”

  “Is he a new man? Kind and courteous, with eyes for no one but you?”

  “That . . . remains to be seen. He’s still on probation, I can guarantee that.”

  “So what’d you do? Leave out the icky bits, please,” Trish hurriedly added.

  “Like I said, nothing much. Kyle brought over some ribs and we barbecued them, that’s all.”

/>   “Is he still getting his meat from that discount butcher?”

  “Let’s just say I ate a lot of salad.”

  “And when you say ‘we barbecued them’ . . .”

  “Okay, I barbecued them.”

  “Who made the rest of the dinner?”

  “Me,” Emmie muttered.

  “Set the table?”

  “Me, all right?”

  “And Kyle?”

  “Drank beer and threw acorns at the neighbor’s yappy dog. There. Happy?”

  “Not really,” Trish said, her voice suddenly subdued. “Will you please get yourself a better boyfriend?”

  “Oh, Kyle’s all right, really.”

  Uncomfortable, Emmie fussed with her hair; it was in that in-between stage as she grew it out. She had liked her sassy short ’do—she thought it helped break her out of her “average” rut (average brown hair and brown eyes, average height, average everything, so much so that she easily vanished in a crowd)—but decided to let it grow when Kyle had said he liked her with long hair. Actually, he had said he liked his “women” with long hair. She had forgotten that until this very moment. And then Rick had seen him getting cozy with that Caitlynn chick at the bar—Caitlynn, with her Texas-beauty-queen blowout. Emmie started to wonder just whose hair, exactly, Kyle had been talking about.

  “But you know,” Emmie ventured, “sometimes a little sophistication would be—”

  “Emmaline. Is that a personal call?”

  She jumped and turned to her boss. “Good morning, John.”

  Wilma sneered, his narrow frame frozen in its usual pinched, tight, ramrod-straight posture, his lips tightening over his protruding teeth. “Say good-bye to your friend, Emmaline,” he said coldly. “We have an appointment at the Hudsons’ in fifteen minutes.”

  Emmie never felt comfortable at initial consultations. Wilma usually met with the clients alone first, implying that Emmie’s presence would cramp his style or ruin his reputation—in what way, Emmie had no idea. He feared she’d drool on the floor, perhaps? But on occasion, Wilma dragged her along, usually to measure rooms and perform other tasks that were beneath him.

  Now she perched carefully on the edge of an overstuffed sofa (the first thing to go, she was certain, knowing Wilma), working hard not to elicit farting noises from the leather. So far, so good. She looked up at the vaulted ceiling of the potential clients’ new, unadorned McMansion and waited for Wilma to start his usual introductory spiel. He always started with a soft-spoken, gently worded bit about his many years in business (twenty-three), his many clients (too many to count), and which houses in the neighborhood he’d worked on. At that point he threw in a bit of gossip to foster a little false intimacy. Dropping his voice to a stage whisper, he’d say something like, “The venerable old Mrs. Studdard, in the mock Tudor on the corner? She fought me tooth and nail about getting rid of the rose-colored fixtures in the master bath. But now that her house has been brought into the twenty-first century, she’s in love with the place. And now she acts like the bidet was all her idea!”

  Laughs all around, then down to brass tacks, as Wilma did with the poor deer-in-the-headlights couple, the Hudsons, in front of them now. The youngish pair were seated attentively in anomalous Edwardian-style tub chairs on the other side of a low coffee table. Chairs would stay but be reupholstered in damask, Emmie guessed. Coffee table would be flung to the curb with the unacceptable sofa.

  Phase II of the introductory spiel began: Wilma assured them that he was there to help, to discover their inner style and put it on display for all the world to see. This, Emmie knew, eventually translated into “I’ll tell you what you want.” And the funny thing was, the customers always went along with his ideas, even when the clients were obviously all about pizza and beer and football, yet Wilma decided what they needed was more custom-made shot-silk draperies in their lives.

  Still, this might not go according to plan; Emmie noticed the husband and wife exchange glances when Wilma broke eye contact to make a few notes. They seemed to be hesitant about the designer’s enthusiastic brainstorming already.

  “Er . . .” the husband began, his small eyes blinking uncertainly in his large face.

  Emmie knew if he protested, this wouldn’t end well. On the few very rare occasions when a client had resisted his plans, Wilma had raised one eyebrow and calmly explained that if they were going to quibble about every nut and bolt and color choice, they would ruin the vision, and he might as well just stop working on the design right then and there. More than once, much to Emmie’s horrified fascination, Wilma had actually told off some particularly stubborn clients and stormed out. But the clients always came crawling back, because everyone knew that Wilma was the interior designer to hire in Jemison, Emmie’s small but rapidly growing hometown in western New York. Lose Wilma, and you might as well start buying your throw pillows at Walmart.

  Emmie stole a glance at her boss. One eyebrow was already creeping toward the dead squirrel perched on his head.

  “Uh . . .” the husband began again, but stopped, mesmerized by the ascending eyebrow.

  “Yes?” Wilma prompted.

  “Well, I was just wondering . . .”

  “Are we concerned about a favorite recliner, or the location of a plasma television, perhaps?”

  The young man tried to chuckle, but it came out as an unidentifiable strangled noise. “S-sort of. I mean, I just want to make sure the TV—”

  “The television will have its place,” Wilma said with a stiff smile.

  Yeah, probably the garage, Emmie said to herself. She watched Plasma TV Guy collapse in on himself a bit, and she knew the resistance was over. Or was it? Now the wife spoke up.

  “You know,” she said in a high-pitched, cheerful voice, “we were also thinking of making sure we had a lot of storage space. I have a lot of—”

  “Collections?” Wilma finished for her. “Or you do scrapbooking?”

  Her eyes crinkled behind her pink-framed glasses. She looked relieved that Wilma seemed to “get” her. Big mistake, thought Emmie. “Both, actually, and we’re hoping—”

  “To have children, so you want to accommodate all their baby items and, later, playthings?”

  The wife started nodding vigorously. Doomed, thought Emmie. Dead client walkin’. “Yes! That’s exactly what—”

  “We’ll work on it,” Wilma cut her off, and Emmie knew that he had no intention of creating either craft corners or cabinets for squeezy toys. As he so often pointed out, Wilma considered his designs to be works of art. And an artist of his caliber did not make concessions for bourgeois hobbies like scrapbooking or having babies.

  Scrapbooking Wife’s smile flipped to a frown as she picked up on the notion that they were being steamrolled.

  And suddenly Emmie found her lips parting. She didn’t know what came over her; she knew she wasn’t allowed to speak at all, unless it was to compliment a client on the “wonderful space” that Wilma was about to obliterate. And yet, as if from very far away, she heard herself clearing her throat.

  “Well, you know,” she said, and her voice shook a little as she realized she was suddenly in the spotlight, “you could fit a built-in worktable for crafts in that sort of lost space between the kitchen and the sitting room, there. And storage cabinets can be unobtrusive if done the right way.”

  She blinked and smiled weakly at the couple, trying desperately to ignore the laser beams shooting out of her employer’s eyeballs to her left. She could feel her antiperspirant failing. Oh, no—the couple seemed interested.

  “That sounds perfect,” Scrapbooking Wife said, firing a “so there” look at Wilma.

  Too petrified to even turn her head a millimeter to look at Wilma, Emmie curled her toes up in her shoes, waiting for a lava-spewing eruption from Mount Designer.

  But instead, Wilma said, and almost cheerfully, “I’ll make a note of that.” And he scribbled dutifully on his sketch pad.

  Emmie felt too light-headed to dare
to participate again, so she returned to her observer status for the rest of the meeting. As everything else went according to plan, she gradually calmed down . . . until after the consultation, when she climbed back into Wilma’s Lincoln Navigator and realized with a lurch of panic that he could now unleash his full fury in private.

  Wilma settled in behind the wheel. The driver’s side door closed with an expensive-sounding clump, and Emmie braced herself as she put on her seat belt. But Wilma said nothing as he started up the SUV and pulled out of the driveway. He said nothing as they drove back into town. He said nothing as he unlocked the door to the office. Emmie wasn’t sure what was worse—a tantrum or this silent treatment.

  Her boss removed his jacket, and Emmie scooted to her desk to take the phones off forwarding and turn her computer back on. She put her purse on the floor—and when she stood up again, Wilma was mere inches from her, doing his best impression of the grinning skeletal monster in Aliens. She froze and closed her eyes.

  “Never . . . again,” he hissed in her ear, and she had no idea what he meant. That she’d never be allowed to speak again? What was he going to do, cut out her tongue? “Do not undermine my authority. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she squeaked, disgusted with herself for sounding so frightened.

  “You. Have. No. Opinion. My business, my ideas, my opinions,” he continued to hiss. “Do you understand?”

  She cleared her throat and tried to sound stronger. “Fine,” she rasped. She clamped her lips shut till he was gone, back to his lair—er, off ice—and Emmie collapsed into her desk chair, hating her life.

  Trish tipped her head sideways, trying to get a better view of Emmie from a different angle.

  “Sweetie?” she ventured. “Emmie, honey? This isn’t a good look for you.”

  Emmie’s “look” was quite ostrich-like. After her terrible, awful, no good, very bad day at work, she had retreated to her beloved little bungalow, crawled into her flannel lounge pants and hoodie (barefoot, as Trish had so cruelly sacrificed her kitty socks to the trash compactor and she didn’t have any other clean ones at the moment), and was now face down in the needlework cushions of her Mission-style sofa, her flannel-clad behind up in the air.