“Nina!” Marty scampered across the store’s floor, as quick in a pair of heels as any athlete in high tops. She grabbed onto Nina’s arm and smiled with one-hundred-watt charm at the confused Bree. “She just means her life is small and lonely and,” Marty made a comical pouty face, “sad. So, so sad because she has no need for a dress. No parties. No chance for a date. No nothing. But do you have any hoodies? Black, of course, like her heart?”
Nina gave the woman named Marty a light nudge and made a face. “Get the eff off me, Crazypants. I don’t need a dress. I don’t need anything from this overpriced clothes rack. I can get hoodies online. Plenty of BOGOs to be had if you find a GD Groupon. Now finish whatever you two windbags are doing so we can go to the damn bookstore. Santa’s there today, and that’s all Carl’s talked about since you Skyped him behind my back and told him about this stupid excursion because you knew he was the easiest way to get me to agree to go. Now, Carl deserves a Santa, a nice new book, and some frickin’ ice cream for being used like a two-bit hooker, don’t ya buddy?” she asked the equally pale young man who was holding her hand and wearing a hoodie that matched hers.
The young man named Carl nodded his covered head, shooting Toni an endearingly shy, crooked smile from beneath the hoodie’s material.
Toni nodded her head without realizing she had. Who the hell wanted to shop for clothes when there was Santa and ice cream?
She smiled at Carl on her way to straighten the mussed pile of overpriced designer jeans. “I get it. I’d rather have ice cream, too,” she murmured as she passed him.
Bree cocked her head again, her fluffy blonde curls trembling when she stepped in front of Toni, her toe virtually tapping. “Excuse me?”
Toni gave her the infamous Vitali glaring eyeball, followed by the condescending rise of one eyebrow. “Sorry?”
Bree grabbed her by the arm and squeezed. “Don’t discourage the customers from shopping, Toni,” she hissed, her green eyes blazing. “Now shut up and go, like, fold something.”
Toni shrugged her off but Bree held tight, creating an angry spark of electricity along her spine. First, a woman almost young enough to have spewed forth from her vagina was chastising her. Second, she was being chastised—again.
Bree was always chastising her. Toni, did no one teach you to fold a scarf properly? The fold of the fabric should be on the outside, moron. Toni? How many times do I have to tell you to remind the customers to apply for store credit to receive an in-store discount? Toni, Toni, Toni.
She’d heard her name more times since she’d gotten this job than she had in her entire life. The sound of Bree’s falsely cheerful, squeaky voice had become less appealing than setting herself on fire.
But Bree was the boss.
While she couldn’t afford to lose this damn job, Bree couldn’t afford to push her around. Because she was going to lose an arm and maybe some of that luscious blonde hair.
Toni sucked in a breath, straightening her stupid pink blazer, a store-employee requirement. “Bree, please take your hand off my arm.”
Bree’s pouty grape-glossed mouth thinned. “Not until you acknowledge that you’ve heard me, Toni.”
“Heard,” she all but growled.
“Nicely, please.”
“If you were hoping to have me slap some whipped cream on top of that reply, hope harder. I hear it springs and it’s eternal.”
Bree’s eyes narrowed—but she was interrupted by Marty and Wanda’s screams, coming from the changing rooms, at first piercing then growing muted and distant.
“Go find out what those women are doing and check on their creepy boy-toy. He’s not right,” she ordered, giving Toni a light shove.
Closing her eyes for a brief moment, she repeated her daily mantra. God. Anywhere but here. I wish I were anywhere but here.
Under normal circumstances, before she was desperate and needed a job more than she needed her pride, Toni would have taken Bree out with a right hook to her pert little nose, lightly sprinkled with sun-kissed freckles.
But under her current poor-as-dirt, on-the-run circumstance, she couldn’t afford to get fired.
Making her way toward the back of the store where the changing rooms were located, she spied the woman named Nina poking her head into the changing room area, still clinging to the young man’s hand.
Damn. Was this some kind of scam where these women created a distraction, tied the employees up then robbed the store blind?
But then she heard Nina’s raspy yelp, too, forcing Toni to pick up her pace. She blew past the rack of leftover half-off summer maxi dresses and rounded the arched entryway to the changing rooms…
To find nothing but the slatted door of a dressing room ajar.
Toni frowned, her eyes scanning the store again for the women.
Nothing. Not a peep.
They’d disappeared completely, leaving only a pile of clothes they’d planned to try on just outside the changing room on a cushioned bench.
“Um, hello? Are you in there?” She wanted to kick herself for sounding so chickenshit, her voice coming off weak and trembling while she listened for a response.