have any idea why Shanice would have left for two weeks?”
“She sent me a message this morning saying that you’d authorized it. It’s her twentieth anniversary. In fact, you gave her an all-expenses-paid trip home to Trinidad. She and her husband flew out this morning.”
“Has everyone lost their minds today?” I bark.
“Apparently Winona said that you told her it would be all right.”
First the doll. Then the insanely over-the-top gift to a woman I’ve broken up with. And now Shanice? Winona did that without even checking with me?
I knew Winona was all wrong for that job. I just never would have guessed how quickly I’d be saying “I told you so”.
My ring tone alerts me that my uncle is calling again. Scowling, I answer the phone.
“Finally!” he snaps. “I just got off the phone with Sloane’s father. He’s very upset. You can’t lead her on like that.” Uncle Bill has been pushing for me to settle down with someone who will look good on my arm at society events. Apparently that’s Sloane. Then I can have a marriage just like my uncle’s, based on equal social status and intense mutual dislike.
Unfortunately, Sloane’s father is a member of the same country club that several of our board members belong to. This isn’t a good time to upset her family.
“I didn’t. It was a mistake,” I protest.
“Well, you’re going to have to just go with it, then. When a Hudson makes a promise, he keeps it, as your father always said.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, did you just say that because Sloane took a birthday gift the wrong way, I’m going to have to marry her? You should have your doctor check your meds, Uncle Bill, I’m worried about you.”
His voice goes frigid. “This is hardly the time for frivolous humor.”
He wouldn’t recognize humor if it bit him on the ass and gave him tetanus. “I’ll see you when I get to the store,” I sigh.
I spend the rest of the ride quickly answering the emails on my to-do list. My nerves are scraped raw. I should never have let Thérèse hire Winona. I could have said no. There was just something in me that was looking for an excuse to let Winona work with us. Something in me that wanted to come to work every day knowing that she and I would be working in the same building, a swirl of sexy chaos one floor beneath me.
It was a mistake I couldn’t afford to make.
But as I climb the steps to Hudson’s, I’m surprised by how reluctant I am to fix that mistake.
Chapter Eleven
Blake
My gut is roiling as I stalk into the personal shopper office. Ariel, the little blonde who always hides when I come in, takes one look at me and bolts like a rabbit flushed from a briar patch.
Winona is sitting at her desk. She’s leaning forward, tapping a pen against her bee-stung lips. Her emerald-green dress skims her body and caresses her curves. Even as angry as I am, heat rushes through my veins at the sight.
She looks up and smiles at me, with that familiar gleam of challenge in her eye. She wants to scrap with me. And I love scrapping with her. Coming from anyone else, that level of sass would just piss me off. When she does it, it fires up my blood and energizes me more than a double espresso shot.
I think part of it is because it’s been so long since anyone made me even stop and think about anything other than spreadsheets and bottom lines and marketing campaigns. And when Winona goes all goody-two-shoes on me, there’s genuine passion behind it. She wants me to be nicer. To be better. She doesn’t crave my money, or the prestige of dating a Hudson. She’s just asking me to be a decent human being.
I mean, she might as well want me to fly to the moon and slice her off a big hunk of cheese, but there’s something oddly touching about her belief that I could possibly be a better man.
Hell. Some part of me likes her. Really, really likes her. And that makes it all the more urgent that I get rid of her before I let her take up any more of my valuable head-space.
A picture flashes through my head, of little-girl-Winona dancing through our aisles, of a million little Winonas, and their genuine love for our store with its magical displays. I think of her parents saving every